Quotation station

Male leadership cannot be an inherently bad thing because the man, Christ Jesus, is head of the church (Col 1:18). His self-giving, servant hearted leadership is not of this world precisely because it does not subjugate others (Matt 20:25). That repressive and subjugating disposition is a curse of the fall more specific to men than women (Gen 3:16) - world history readily confirms this. Thus a woman is not so obviously the candidate to evidence one powerful work of Christ who is able to transform men who ‘rule’ into men who ‘lay down their lives’ in servant-hearted leadership. Jesus himself desired to evidence his handiwork and duly appointed 12 male Apostles to do so, whilst defying so many other patriarchal conventions of his day. When men lead like Christ, in distinction to the way men lead in the world, the weak are made strong, the timid are made brave and those most estranged are welcomed in. When they fail, and lead as the world leads, it is no wonder women feel so called ...

The moral matrix of American liberals: Care/harm Liberty/oppression Fairness/cheating Loyalty/betrayal Authority/subversion Sanctity/degradation From Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind  p351 (NYT Bestseller March 2012).  Haidt is a social psychologist at the NYU-Stern School of Business and has given three TED talks.

NT scholar, Klaus Berger, emeritus at the Uni of Heidelberg wrote a book called Die Bibelfälscher in his ‘senior years after a whole lifetime of critical study.' Don Carson summarises the book as follows: Berger’s volume - no mere tract but a sustained expostulation… opens by arguing that two centuries of biblical research has decimated our churches. The universities provide the pastors for most German churches, and these pastors are systematically taught a ‘hermeneutic of mistrust’… The result is that scholars who identify as Catholics or Protestants feel entirely free to disavow any allegiance to historic Christian teaching even though the Bible teaches it… Berger concludes by insisting that historical criticism in Germany has promoted atheism, splintered churches, and converted no one to Christ. In the near term Berger finds little hope; the trajectories of acceptable scholarship are discouraging. He quotes the [now former] Roman Catholic archbishop of Chicago, Francis Car...

That word above all earthly powers, no thanks to them, abideth;  The Spirit and the gifts are ours through Him Who with us sideth:  Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also;  The body they may kill: God’s truth abideth still,  His kingdom is forever. This song has been called “the great­est hymn of the great­est man of the great­est per­i­od of Ger­man his­to­ry” and the “Bat­tle Hymn of the Ref­or­ma­tion.”

Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service, you could not give Him anything that was not, in a sense, his own already. (From Mere Christianity)

Watch out, Bassanio. The devil can quote Scripture for his own use. An evil soul using a holy story is like a criminal who smiles at you. He looks like a good apple but he’s rotten at the core. Oh, liars can look so honest!

...the world we live in, where the main idol is self, and its main doctrine is autonomy, and its central act of worship is being entertained, and its two main shrines are the television and the cinema, and its most sacred genuflection is the uninhibited act of sexual intercourse. Such a culture will find the glory of marriage in the mind of Jesus virtually unintelligible. See original quote on  desiringgod

I am convinced that if the Church went back to it’s main task of proclaiming the Gospel and getting people converted to Christ, it would have a far greater impact on the social, moral and psychological needs of men than any other thing it could possibly do. Some of the greatest social movements of history have come about as the result of men being converted to Christ.

Those who believe in the Fall ought not be shocked when we experience its effects, such as disharmony between our actual bodies and our mental perception of ourselves.  Our deepest desires and our most fundamental notions of self-identity don’t need blanket affirmation; they need resurrection. From this  article  on thegospelcoalition.org